PASTORAL CARE AT OUM

By Prof Dr Widad Othman, Deputy Vice President (Academic), OUM

OUM tutors play a crucial role as the academic interface
between the University and its learners. The tutors’
role, though, is not limited to providing academic guidance.
Just as importantly, they are trained and mentored
to deliver pastoral care to adult learners with multifarious
dispositions from wide-ranging backgrounds.

“OUM tutors are cognisant of the
fact that open and distance
learners need to be embedded
within a support network of tutors
and peers constituting a
community of learning”

This dual emphasis is in recognition of the challenges that
open and distance learners typically face as they come to
grips with being back in formal education even as they
continue to juggle work and life responsibilities.

OUM tutors are cognisant of the fact that open and
distance learners need to be embedded within a support
network of tutors and peers constituting a community of
learning to ensure that they do not become isolated and
risk slipping through the net.

They know that the most common issues faced by learners
relate to the paucity of self-direction, study skills, and
skills in managing time, workload and stress. They have
seen first-hand, for example, how learner procrastination
commonly leads to a last-minute rush to cover as much
ground as possible, which in turn results in anxiety and
mental block in the face of the looming examinations.
These and other obstacles to learning need to be
addressed by tutors both online and face-to-face, which is
in itself a challenge.

“[P]roviding effective pastoral care calls for tutors to be approachable and empathetic.”

In the first instance, providing effective pastoral care calls
for tutors to be approachable and empathetic.

Of course, some are more natural at this than others but
the trait can be consciously inculcated. In any case, as
experienced academics would attest, demonstrating
approachability is often much less demanding than may
be imagined.

It is but a misconception that providing pastoral support
requires tutors already weighed down by heavy workloads
to spend an inordinate amount of time on their learners.

What is overlooked is that simple gestures like calling our
learners by their names, exchanging a few friendly words
with them, and sparing a minute or two to offer them
encouragement are in most cases sufficient as the first
steps towards creating goodwill and openness.

Notwithstanding, just as there is a risk of doing too little in
providing pastoral care to learners, there is also a risk of
overextending oneself despite the best intentions.

Tutors need to exercise good judgement in deciding when
intervention may be counterproductive for the learners.
While one cannot be prescriptive about it, one should
always keep the goal unwaveringly within sight: to provide
support without causing the learners to become over-reliant
on that support or to forgo their responsibility towards
their own studies.

In sum, providing pastoral care is not the same as acting
as a full-fledged counsellor; nor is it equivalent to being
singularly responsible for helping learners to sort out every
problem big or small that they may be facing. It is rather,
simply, to act with human warmth and empathy, all with
the knowledge that small gestures of goodwill and a little
compassion can go a long way.